


The Batsh*t Crazy Affair

by LeetheT



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27308191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeetheT/pseuds/LeetheT
Summary: So, I had this mad urge to write a Halloween story. I meant it to be silly and scary, and I'm not quite sure I managed either, let alone both, but what the heck. I hope you enjoy, and as always, any comments, including criticism, are most welcome.The story is GEN, about 3,500 words.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	The Batsh*t Crazy Affair

The Batsh*t Crazy Affair

A chorus of wolfish howls trailed off into a single high note that whined into silence.

Into that silence Illya Kuryakin said, “I categorically refuse.”

Startlement cracked the night’s bone-deep chill, and Napoleon looked at his partner, crouched as he was in the lee of an ancient, tilted headstone.

Hundreds of similar stones surrounded them, like old soldiers slowly marching on the hill toward the ancient mansion perched askew on the cliff above, dark but for the rancid yellow light flickering in the ground floor windows. The moon was full and bright, so that the cemetery seemed almost cheerful compared to their destination.

Mist trailed from Illya’s lips as he went on. “This is ridiculous. I refuse to be part of this absurd comedy of Halloween cliches.”

Napoleon sipped the icy air and said, “Too late. You signed the contract. And he’s _your_ nemesis, after all, not mine.” He knew Illya was just venting. They didn’t have any choice.

“So this is _my_ fault?” A final grouse.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Napoleon raised the binoculars in hands stiff with cold despite gloves. “But I _would_ vigorously defend your right to say it.”

They crept closer, headstone by headstone. Tendrils of fog snaked over the hill toward the house and the cemetery below it, as if on cue.

“Could he be doing this?” Napoleon whispered – then was annoyed with himself. “I mean, is all this some kind of setup? The fog, the wind, the Lon Chaney aria we were just treated to?” 

“It _is_ some kind of setup,” Illya said dismissively. “He’s staged it like an off-off-Broadway play. The sort that closes in one night.” He glanced at his watch. “Four minutes to midnight. Let’s check in and get this farce over with. I’m freezing. These tights are ridiculous.”

“Take it up with Section 8,” Napoleon said through chattering teeth. He was no happier about their prescripted attire than Illya. He slipped his communicator from his bulky belt – thinking all kinds of curse words best left unspoken – and spoke low.

“Open Channel D.”

“Channel D open, Mr Solo.”

“Annie, route me to McGowan.” Mike McGowan was in charge of the three-man team sent to reconnoitre the rear of the estate while Napoleon and Illya braved the front. With a little luck _they_ could slip in and rescue Madame Schultz, the German ambassador, or at least generate a little helpful mayhem, while their host was playing cat and mouse with his two “invited” guests.

He heard the crackle of the relay and then … nothing. “McGowan? You there?”

Silence.

“McGowan, it’s Solo. Are you in place?”

Nothing but dead leaves in a swirl of icy wind, clattering against headstones.

“McGowan, dammit…”

Still nothing. He glared at his communicator as if it were the problem.

“We have to go.” Illya tapped his watch.

Shaking his head, Napoleon stood up. His partner did the same, and they marched to the house, up the uneven wooden steps, and across the porch to what had once been a handsome polished door.

“Oh, for …” Napoleon rolled his eyes and used the gigantic goblin-knocker to bang on the door. A gust of wind whipped up and slapped Illya’s yellow cape into his face. He slapped it back with a choice curse.

“I also don’t appreciate being the sidekick,” he snarled.

Napoleon, because he was fond of breathing, swallowed his smile. “Again, please address your complaints to Section 8. Or to our host, whoever he is – this wasn’t my doing.”

The massive door creaked painfully open, lamplight splashing out across the stoop. Framed in that light stood a man in a black cape not unlike Napoleon’s.

Illya barked, “Count Zark!”

Zark smiled. “Ah, you remember me. I’m touched.”

Napoleon muttered, “You’re touched all right.”

“And your intrepid associate, Mr. Solo, who thwarted my plans for global domination.”

He looked them up and down, smiling madly.

“Or should I call you Batman and Robin? Yes. I think I should.” He nodded in turn, then stood aside, offering a courtly gesture for them to enter. “Welcome to my house. Enter freely and of your own will—”

Illya swept past him with another snarl, stumbling over the curled toes of his green booties.

Napoleon thought _he’s so snarly tonight they should have given him a wolfman costume._ But they were acting under Zark’s orders, idiotic costumes included, to keep the hostage alive. He followed his partner and Zark shut the door behind them with a doom-heavy boom.

“I am so glad to see my favorite dynamic duo again.”

 _Please don’t rub your hands together in evil delight_ , Napoleon thought. _Please_.

Zark rubbed his hands together in evil delight.

Napoleon groaned. “We’re here. We’ve come unarmed and alone as you required. Where is Madame Schultz?”

Again Zark gestured further into the house. “She is here, and well. Come with me. Only a little while longer and all this will be over.”

“Very reassuring,” Illya snarled.

Zark led them along the dimlit, web-spattered corridor to a room on the right. Within, they immediately saw Madame Schultz on a stool, handcuffed, a pair of goons on either side.

“As promised, Madame Schultz.” To his goons, he said, “Bind them.”

This was done with alacrity and professionalism. They were also searched, and it was somehow more embarrassing in the ridiculous costumes Zark had insisted on as part of the ransom demand. They were then allowed to join Madame Schultz.

Napoleon harbored the faint hope that the German ambassador had never seen the television program or comic books in question. Somehow that would make this less humiliating.

She scowled heavily at them both.

“For vat reason in Gott’s name vy you are so dressed? Ze batman and … vat is it? Ze bluebird? Ze …” she flicked her fingers in the international symbol of someone trying to think of a word in a foreign language. “Ze … woodpecker?”

Napoleon sighed inwardly. “That would be Robin, madame.”

“Of ze comic books?”

Napoleon sighed outwardly this time. “The same, madame.”

Illya stoically said nothing.

The room was long, empty of anything resembling normal furniture. Lab tables and various apparatus cluttered the middle of the space, obscuring the far end, where the light was coming from.

Zark waited in seeming patience for the agents’ attention. When he had it, it gestured toward the back of the room.

“You see that I have brought your friends here as well.”

McGowan, Danning, and Crane, the three agents assigned to back them up, lay strapped to tables in a row, apparently unconscious, electrodes fastened to their heads. Behind them a wall of machinery loomed, lights flickering, emitting a low hum of electronic menace.

Napoleon and Illya exchanged a split-second expressionless glance that said “damn” in each man’s native tongue. Obviously they’d again underestimated Count Zark’s electronics genius. It was easy – perilously easy – to see him as simply an over-the-top nut in a cape.

Zark crossed to the tables, eyeing machinery and victims alike with a covetous eagerness. “They shall play a crucial role in my latest experiment in thought control.”

“What about us?” Illya asked.

“Rest assured, your role, too, is crucial. Not as part of my experiment, but as part of my revenge. Your punishment is to see your former friends turned into my faithful slaves. Before I do the same to you.” He turned and smiled.

“You see, I’ve dreamed of this moment of vengeance for some time, Mr. Kuryakin.”

Napoleon grumbled, “People never forget you, do they?”

Illya replied, “ _You’re_ the one who thwarted his plans for global domination.”

“We shall start with this one,”Zark said, going to the first agent – Marcus Danning – to adjust the electrodes attached to his head.

Then he approached his machinery and began to activate it. The hum grew louder, menacing in its intensity, followed by electrical crackling and sizzling, not to mention some rather alarming sparks flying from various points of the huge apparatus.

Finally, Zark stood back, raised his arms, and cackled, “Life! Give my creature LIFE!” He flipped a rather showy switch on the wall of machinery and visible electrical fire, like lightning, zipped along the wires to the electrodes attached to Danning’s head.

“Zey are already alive, you stupid, stupid man,” Madame Schultz snapped. Napoleon gave her mental points for pluck.

Zark paid no attention to her, darting here and there to adjust knobs and levers and examine dials as the hum intensified and the lights flashed. Danning, strapped down and webbed with wiring, twitched on the table, but made no sound.

“Even if he can’t really brainwash them…” Illya said _sotto voce_ to Napoleon, who nodded.

“He’s likely to kill them. But I’m –” He wrenched again fruitlessly, at the manacles—“open to suggestion about how we stop him.”

His partner too struggled with the manacles, having no better success. Madame Schultz stood in silence, concern etched on her face.

The noise and flashing clattered into quiet, drawing the agents’ attention again to the other side of the room.

Zark beckoned, and one of the goons at their side left them to unstrap Danning and sit him up. Napoleon and Illya watched intently.

Danning seemed awake, but glassy-eyed, his movements stuff as he rose from the gurney. He reminded the agents of certain zombies of recent and lamented acquaintance. A tall, athletic agent, his normal grace seemed to have deserted him as he lurched over to Zark, who grinned maniacally.

“Who is your master?”

The words were hollow but chilling. “Count Zark is my master.”

Zark’s laughter rang through the room. He turned to Napoleon and Illya.

“He will do anything I command. He would die for me. He would kill for me. Shall I demonstrate?”

“Don’t put yourself out on our account,” Napoleon said hastily.

“How does it work?” Illya asked, and Napoleon could have kicked him before he realized that Illya was simply trying to delay the Count.

“I have programmed these machines to penetrate the brain on every level from cerebellum to the cerebral cortex. Every thought and emotion is redirected to create utter loyalty to me, without damaging any of the person’s intelligence or capabilities.”

“So I see,” Illya put in, dry as burnt toast. The Danning they saw was an automaton, with none of the agent’s intellect or personality in his face or actions.

“You shall,” Zark sneered, and said to Danning, “Kill Napoleon Solo.”

He waved to his goon, who handed over his semiautomatic pistol. Danning took it and made a beeline for Napoleon.

“Danning!” Illya shouted. “Don’t!” He lunged for the other agent, but the goons at his side yanked him back.

Danning raised the gun, his eyes as grey and dead as the bullet he planned to fire.

Napoleon twisted violently away, wincing instinctively as the gunshot blasted in his eardrums. He caught his balance against Illya’s shoulder and stopped. Took inventory. _Not shot._ He straightened to see the goon who’d been at his side slumped to the floor. Danning stood over him, slowly lowering the gun to his side.

Napoleon looked at Danning, still glassy-eyed and stiff, then at the fallen goon. He took in a much-needed breath.

“So. Obedient but not exactly the sharpest awl in the toolshed, eh?”

“Perhaps some fine-tuning is in order,” Zark owned with equanimity, returning his attention to his computers. “Back to your gurney,” he ordered over his shoulder.

“Danning!” Napoleon snapped. “Don’t! Listen to me…”

Without acknowledging either the dead goon or his fellow agent, Danning turned and marched back to his gurney.

“Damn it,” Napoleon muttered. Zark might be creating lousy assassins but he was sure as hell ruining good agents.

Zark’s goon retrieved his gun from Danning and strapped him in. Zark placed the electrodes and returned to his bank of machines. The ominous hum rose in their hearing once more.

Napoleon and Illya struggled frantically, but futilely, to free themselves. Abruptly something loud popped, the lights flared and dimmed, and sparks flew from the control panels of Zark’s apparatus.

He rushed to it, but the sparks continued to shoot out, driving him back.

He gave voice to a few curses, his entire body taut with frustrated anger, then turned.

“Take them to the dungeons.” He waved dismissively at both goons and prisoners. “I must repair this before we can complete my plans.”

His goons – Napoleon wondered, perhaps belatedly, whether they, too, had undergone Zark’s … zombification process – grabbed the handcuffed trio and shoved them out of the room and down the main hall toward the back of the house.

They were pushed stumbling down a narrow basement stair to a dark corridor. The goons turned on flashlights – Illya spared Napoleon a sour look, as if their costumes and lack of gear were his fault – and herded them along an astonishing length of corridors, left, right, left, down another short flight of stairs and round more corners until they bumped up against a door in a dark dead end that smelled of damp and dirt.

One of the goons shoved his way forward. Napoleon heard a door creak, then a light came on in the room. They were unceremoniously shoved into what at first glance looked like a dungeon. A more sober examination made the rooms purpose clearer.

“A root cellar,” said the canny Madame Schultz. She slumped onto a stack of burlap bags that probably contained very old and inedible root vegetables of some sort. “And now what do we do?”

Napoleon glanced at Illya, who returned the look archly. “You’re the one with the utility belt.”

Napoleon rolled his eyes. “It’s a _costume_. Anyway, you’re the one who’s the walking toolkit. Any chance of a lockpick in that …” He eyed the elflike costume his partner wore. “…get-up?”

Illya issued one of his long-suffering sighs, the ones that made Napoleon want to pour ice-cold water over his head. But he did punctuate the sigh by sliding a lockpick from somewhere in his tights that Napoleon didn’t really want to think about, though he gave his partner credit for ingenuity.

“At least one of us came prepared,” Illya groused, going to the door.

“Nice work, boy wonder,” Napoleon said, knowing Illya had more pressing concerns at the moment than killing him.

Illya had worked at the gigantic lock no more than a few moments before he stopped, listening. Napoleon sidled quietly over and they exchanged a look that said, without words, ‘do you hear that’ and ‘yes I do.’

They pressed against the door, heads close to but not visible through the small square grated opening.

“He’ll know!” a woman’s voice, almost a whisper.

“I don’t care,” a man’s voice, rough with years. “We got to do the right thing, Caroline.”

“Edgar,” she said. “What will happen to us?”

His hard voice softened. “Caroline, honey, we got to do what’s right. You know that. Come on.”

“Edgar…”

Silence. Both agents listened with their whole bodies, but heard no sound of movement, no other speech, and – worst – no sound of the door being unlocked from the outside. After a moment, Illya simply started at the lock again.

Napoleon, guessing some of Zark’s hench-people were having a moment of conscience outside their prison, pressed his face to the grate.

“Hello? We need help, please.” The corridor was dark; still, he sensed no movement or sound, no impression that anyone was out there. “Hello?”

Nothing. He sighed, waved at the lock. “Might as well keep at that. I think whoever it was changed their minds.”

Illya dutifully set to work again.

Madame Schultz watched in silence for a while, then said, “So then vy are you so costumed? Is zis ze way UNCLE agents dress?”

With heroic patience, Napoleon explained. “Madame, when Zark contacted our organization to tell us he had kidnapped you, he attached certain requirements to his ransom demands. Certain—”

“Ludicrous,” Illya snapped, not looking up.

Napoleon nodded. “Certain ludicrous requirements. We don’t really know why, but compliance got us through the door.”

Madame Schultz nodded at the door to the root cellar. “ _Zat_ door?”

“Well, that part wasn’t intentional, madame. Don’t despair.” _There’s plenty of time for that._

Illya stopped, straightened. “Do you smell that?”

Napoleon did, and all his nerve endings spiked to high alert. “Smoke. Damn it.” He made a frantic second circuit of the room for anything that could be used to break down the door. The room had no windows, no other way out. Nothing but a few wooden pallets and some cobwebby sacks of ancient vegetables. They would die of smoke inhalation if they didn’t get out.

Pointlessly, but irresistibly, he grabbed the grating of the window and wrenched at it with all his strength. The door wiggled a little, but the grate didn’t shift – not that they could have fit through anyway. He stepped back in frustration, said to his still frantically working partner:

“Should we try –”

Abruptly the door swung outward, and Illya nearly stumbled into an old woman in a long, old-fashioned dress. She seemed strangely calm, a handsome woman with her white hair in a bun, looking at them with dark, intense eyes.

“I beg your—” Illya began, but she overrode him, reaching out with beckoning hands.

“Come quickly. You have to get out. The house is on fire.”

They followed her into the pitch dark corridor, then stopped.

“I cannot see anything!” Madame Schultz cried out.

“Don’t worry,” the woman – Caroline, Napoleon assumed – said, and Napoleon felt a strong, cold hand grasp his. “This is our house – mine and Edgar’s. I know it back and forth and upside down. Just follow me.”

Napoleon seized Madame Schultz’s nearest hand, and Illya took her other, and follow they did, in a line, as Caroline led them through a labyrinthine basement in total darkness. Straight, then right, left, right, up a short flight of stairs, around and about, each of them regularly bumping into walls or various other mysterious items, until they came to a stair.

The smokes was heavier in the narrow stairwell, but faint grey light shone above.

Caroline pulled, and they followed her up.

They stumbled out into the smoky kitchen – Napoleon and Illya looked around, at a loss – this was not the route they’d taken going down – and an elderly, bearded man in coveralls entered from a swinging door.

“Why are you standing there like you ain’t got the sense God gave a lemon?” he shouted. “Get out! Your friends is already runnin’ for the road. I sneaked ‘em out the back. Now get goin’! Caroline, get ‘em movin’!”

Edgar and Caroline hustled them out the swinging door, through a dining room sans furniture and, thankfully, flames, into the main corridor of the house.

“That way!” Caroline said. “Go!” She stepped aside Edgar took her hand. The agents grabbed Madame Schultz and ran, coughing.

The main floor was a maze of smoke and flame. One glance into the big room that had been Zark’s lab told Napoleon there was no chance of rescuing survivors – the room was an inferno, fire climbing every wall, the ceiling already crashing down in flame and smoke.

Illya pulled Napoleon back and they plunged on.

The front door was open, smoke being sucked toward it, out of it. On either side flames licked up the walls and black smoke curled down toward them. They dove through the door, onto the porch, coughing, eyes streaming, and drew Madame Schultz down the steps and into the yard.

“Wait!” Illya stopped so hard he yanked Madame Schultz, and Napoleon, a step backward. “Edgar and Caroline!”

He leaped back up the stairs, Napoleon at his back, each agent calling their saviors’ names in counterpoint to the other.

Flames blasted out the doorway, searing heat forcing them back. They jumped away, stumbling down the steps and into the yard, defeated. The house was all but consumed in flames, fire licking from every window, out every chink in the old roof. It would collapse in on itself within a few minutes.

“Why didn’t they leave with us?” Napoleon said, not really asking the question of his partner, who could no more answer it than he. They turned and, shoulder to shoulder, started down the hill.

Ahead of them, they saw Madame Schultz, already nearly to the gate, where McGowan, Danning and Crane stood, apparently unhurt – at least, two of them were. Danning was with them, but there was no telling what damage had been done to him. And maybe no repairing it.

Napoleon and his partner had walked no more than a dozen steps when Illya grabbed his arm so hard it hurt. “ _Napoleon_.”

The urgent hiss of his name stopped him. He turned to see his partner scowling in disbelief at a headstone near the winding walk that led from the house to the street far below.

Napoleon stepped closer. Then closer still.

“No,” he said, chilled beyond the power of the weather. “ _No_. Impossible.”

Illya breathed deep of the cold air. “If you say so.”

The full moon clearly lit the headstone, wide and square, with two small oval portraits of a man and a woman, faded but clearly resembling their rescuers. Below, the engraved words were worn with weather and years.

Edgar Clarence Wells and Caroline Edith Wells

1843-1928 1848-1928

Together in Life, they shall not in Death be Parted

The End


End file.
